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Thursday, December 26, 2013

Chewy Pralines

These easy candies make great hostess gifts, wrapped up in a pretty dish with ribbons. That's if you can get them out of the house before your family eats them all. But not to worry, this recipe is easily doubled. They'd be perfect on the Mardi Gras party buffet table as well.

Since we are from south Louisiana, Cajun country, pralines are a favorite in our family. The hard ones, the chewy ones, they are all good! My mom sent me a message recently with this recipe saying, "Can we make these for Christmas?" So we did!

Method
Line a large baking pan with foil and butter it well. Set aside.

Combine sugar, corn syrup and salt in heavy saucepan and bring to a boil.

Cook to 245 °F or 118 °C on a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, as I don’t in this rented house in Rhode Island for Christmas, this is called the firm ball stage. Get yourself a glass of cold water and after just a few minutes of boiling, drip a little of the syrup in the glass to test for doneness. It is ready for the next step when it forms a firm ball that can still be mashed. Check out this link for a visual.

Add butter, milk and the pecans and cook to 242°F or 116°C degrees, stirring constantly.

My syrup and sugar mixture hardened up when I added the milk so I just heated it gently till it melted again and stirred constantly until it was completely combined. Once again, if you don’t have a thermometer, cook the mixture until it’s thick and sticky and looks like it will hold its shape on a spoon.

Add the vanilla and stir well.

Spoon out onto your greased foil lined pan, working quickly. Use two spoons, one to scoop and the other to scrape the mixture off onto the foil. If it hardens up, gently rewarm till it loosens enough to spoon out again.

I got 18!

Let cool. Makes about 15-20 pieces, depending on the size of your spoon. Or more if you make them bite-sized.

Cooking for people I love, creating deliciousness out of fresh ingredients, browsing through cookbooks for inspiration, perusing grocery shelves for choice items and writing about my expat life enriched by food. That's what I do here.